Hydra Market’s sales topped €1 billion in 2020 alone, authorities say.
Apr 5, 2022 at 9:22 p.m
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German authorities, with the help of US law enforcement agencies, have shut down the world’s largest illegal marketplace on the dark web, they said.
Hydra Market was a Russian-language marketplace that had operated over the Tor network since at least 2015 and was known for extensive drug trafficking, according to German authorities. The market’s 17 million known customers are also known to buy and sell fake documents and stolen credit cards, they said. In 2020, sales amounted to well over 1 billion euros.
German authorities said they seized Hydra’s server infrastructure and about $25 million in bitcoin on Tuesday.
“The seizures carried out today were preceded by extensive investigations that have been conducted since August 2021 and in which several US authorities were involved,” said the federal police.
Numerous US agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the IRS Criminal Investigation and others, were involved in the operation, they said.
According to the German authorities, the investigations were directed against the operators and administrators of Hydra. Among other things, authorities said the market was used for criminal transactions, money laundering and the liberal sale of illegal narcotics.
According to German authorities, Hydra was the illegal marketplace with the highest sales worldwide. In 2020 alone, sales were at least 1.23 billion euros. It also offered a service to obfuscate digital transactions, making crypto investigations more difficult for law enforcement.
A plaque marks the exterior of the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, February 4, 2020.
In addition to law enforcement actions that destroyed Hydra’s illicit marketplace, the U.S. sanctioned the company along with an Estonia-based virtual currency exchange, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.
“The global threat of cybercrime and ransomware originating in Russia, and the ability of criminal leaders to operate there with impunity, deeply concerns the United States,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement. “Our actions today send a message to criminals that you cannot hide on the dark web or its forums, and you cannot hide in Russia or anywhere else in the world.”
According to the US Treasury Department, Hydra accounted for around 86% of illegal bitcoin transactions in Russia in 2019, while Estonian exchange Garantex was used for over $100 million in virtual currency transactions related to illegal actors. Estonian authorities revoked Garantex’s license in February, but it continued to operate “by unscrupulous means,” the department said.
These sanctions are an attempt by the Biden administration to show that the virtual currency cannot escape US and international sanctions against Russia or other criminal actors.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control “oversees all efforts to circumvent or violate sanctions related to Russia, including through the use of virtual currencies, and is committed to using its comprehensive enforcement agencies to address violations and promote compliance.” . said the department.